Calling Mossbags......Will we be seeing a Joe Show this weekend?

Well after kicking the point of the year and recieving MOTM against Westmeath in very wet conditions in Mullingar, do you think the Senchelstown Sensation can turn it on again and lead Meath to a famous victory over 1991 All-Ireland Semi-Finalists and 2006 Minor Champions Roscommon?

Obviously this will be a tightly contested affair played in the beautiful scenic venue of Pairc Tailteann. I can see the Rossies dropping a man back to snuff out the Joe threat but with his outstanding contribution from placed balls as well as open play, can the Senchelstown prodigy be held?

You can use Private Mail you know....

Bright-Oak wrote:You can use Private Mail you know....

Yes I am aware of how to use a PM. Are you?

Yes.

Bright-Oak wrote:Yes.

Well then, what is the problem?

Still don't see where you're going with this?

The 'Seanachstown Sensation' will be facing into a revitalized and all-conquering army of sheep stealers who set their stall out early in the year with victory over the 94 Connacht Champions and re-enforced their credentials after coming out on top after an epic dual over one of the all-Ireland semi-finalists of only last year.

Sheridan, lets not forget is on record as saying he once lost his appetite, a crime in the modern game, and one never committed by the true greats, the type of players our children aspire to be: Cooney, Purcell, Joyce,Joe Canning, so the onus is on the big man to prove he truly has re-discovered his bite, his zest, his very hunger for the game. Is he hungry enough?, like say - Joe Canning? Its time for this enigmatic type player to put up or shut up and answer the hard questions: Is he a heavy-weight in the mould of say - Joe Canning?? or is he just another lightweight, ne'er-do-well, schmuck, Meath footballer only good for playing well in the wind and rain against the likes of lowly Westmeath? Can he handle the pressure?? Can he live up to peoples high and often un-realistic expectations?? Can he give us a 'Joe-Show to remember? Anything less then 2-10 from open play would after all, be such a let down.
Will these questions be answered in the scenic environs of Pairc Tailteann this coming Saturday? We await with bated breath.

The SS

Joe Canning watch out, this guy is seriously after your crown as the official most loved star here on GT.
ps, Up Meath!

‘It was hard. People were screaming, looking for loved ones'


Vincent
Hogan talks to Meath’s Joe Sheridan and discovers a footballer who
loves the game as much as anyone but, having experienced the horror of
the Omagh bombing at first hand, knows it’s not a matter of life or
death






By Vincent Hogan

Saturday August 29 2009



Sticks and stones. What's the worst
thing they can call you? Slow? Lazy? Useless? They see you over-run a
pass, jump too early for a high ball, kick a careless wide and you know
exactly the sounds that will come spilling through the wire. "Ya big @&*%$£ Sheridan!"The
voices never have a face. They just come at you, random and
disembodied, digging for weakness. You remember that club game against Trim
in 2007 just days before you walked out on inter-county football. How
you were playing "atrocious" and ended up staring at your boots, as if
there were riddles printed in the leather.You heard none of it,
mind. You could have been in outer space. But Mary, your sister and
Seneschalstown's physio, said she was shocked by the depth of abuse
that evening. It was as if you had been strolling the field with a
sandwich-board declaring yourself God Almighty."Can't believe you didn't hear it..."Look, you don't do precious. You've been cursed with this 'great white hope' thing since winning those two All-Ireland colleges with St Pat's and getting to the 2002 All-Ireland minor final with Meath. Back then, your opponents knew nothing but hardship and vapour trails. Sean Boylan even had you training with the Meath seniors at 18.Your future was mapped out like the plot of a beautiful novel. All you needed to do was stay breathing.Maybe these things are pre-written in higher places. You see, you made your senior Championship debut against Laois in 2004. You lost. Should have been against Wicklow
in the first round, but you missed that through suspension. A little
flare-up in an U-21 game. Gave a referee some aggro. Silly.The year ended with an extra-time one-point defeat to Fermanagh in Enniskillen.
You missed two frees from straight in front of the posts that,
ordinarily, you'd almost back-heel over. Just tried too hard. Forced
the thing. Froze. "I'll never forget it," you smile now. "I was
just worrying too much about it. Fermanagh came back to beat us and I
had to take a lot of responsibility for that. A few people were getting
on to me after. I suppose you take the good with the bad. "Bottom line, I was expected to kick them over and we should have won. To be honest with you, it was my fault that we didn't."Great white hope indeed.THE red light probably saved them. They'd just stopped to ask directions to the GAA pitch. "You'd best go right up the town," said the woman. "But I'm not sure you'll be let. There's a bomb scare."John Mitchells of Birmingham were playing a match in Omagh.
Women's football. The Sheridans had seen it as an opportunity to catch
up with old friends from across the water. They'd toyed with the idea
of travelling that morning. Lobbed it about. Squeezed it for ripeness.Eventually, Damien senior brought it to a head."Sure feck it, what else would we be doing?"So there they were, engine ticking, at traffic lights on the corner of Market Street and Dublin Road in this nondescript Tyrone
town. Just after three in the afternoon on a clammy Saturday. August
15, 1998. Muttering little curses about the looming inconvenience."Probably be sent around the houses now..."And it happened. Joe Sheridan
remembers the bang and the blast wave. He talks of "a gush of wind", of
the roof of the family mini-bus being sucked in on top of them, then
snapping back out to its normal shape like it was a biscuit tin. He
remembers the shards of glass and metal, the lumps of flying masonry,
the blizzard of bits and pieces go sweeping up past the traffic-lights.
And he remembers his father's voice, how Damien recognised the
smell of explosive from his time working in the mines. He remembers the
word "BOMB" and how, suddenly, everyone was mouthing it. Screaming it.By
a small miracle, the windows of the bus never shattered. All around
them was a scene of splintered destruction, but the Sheridans hadn't a
single graze between them. His mother, Geraldine -- a nurse by
profession -- jumped out immediately and began tending the wounded. The
mini-bus became a makeshift ambulance, ferrying wounded up to Tyrone County Hospital.An ambulance with children sitting in silent witness of things children should never see."Just
mayhem to be honest," remembers Joe, then a 14-year-old. "They were
throwing people into the back of the van and trying to get them up to
the hospital as quickly as possible."It was horrifying. One
young lad who we've actually been up to visit a few times, his whole
side was blown off him. A water main had burst and he was lying there,
this flood of blood and glass spilling down over him. He had a couple
of buckets of shrapnel pulled out of him and would need so many
operations. An incredible character, he made a big recovery and is into
stuff like go-karting now. "It was hard. There were people
lying on the ground and we were just making room for them in the back
of the van. Unbelievable. We were among the first people up to the
hospital. People screaming. Looking for someone missing. Wondering if
their loved ones were dead."We just waited around the car park
while mom and dad were inside. Stayed there 'til evening time. I
remember there wasn't a word said in the van on the way home. Two and a
half, maybe three hours. We were in shock. We went back up a while
later for the blessing of the graves."But you never forget the faces. It took a while. You'd go to bed at night and you'd be thinking about what you saw."Joe
Sheridan loves football as much as anyone. His whole family loves it.
He still gets a kick out of seeing his 85-year-old granny in the stand.
But he knows it's not a matter of life and death. He knows the difference between tragedy and a bad day on the frees.MAYBE the worst thing about walking away was the epidemic of rumour spawned.People's
arithmetic got skewed. Two and two added up to six. If he couldn't play
for Meath, it surely had to be because of a row. No 23-year-old turned
his back on county football without some class of a ruction. Did they?Except, there was no ruction, no dramatic splintering of his relationship with Colm Coyle.
Joe Sheridan just stopped loving the game in '07. And the more he
slipped out of love with it, the harder he tried to resuscitate things.
He trained when he needed to rest. He tried to squeeze juice from a
stone.About three weeks before the first game against Dublin, he
had considered leaving. All the sensors in his body registered trouble.
He felt no freshness, no joy. His dad encouraged him against anything
rash but, by the day of the replay, rashness seemed his only hope.Coyle
had hauled him off the field approaching half-time and, if Joe should
have been mortified, all he felt was a terrible emotional and physical
fatigue. Two days after the club game against Trim, he took himself to
training in Navan.The
funny thing is he brought gear too. Why? He's not so sure. Maybe he
imagined Coyle might talk him out of it when they spoke. But the
manager didn't try to. "Colm, I can't do this anymore," said Joe. "I
think I'm going to have to pull myself off the panel.""Okay," said Coyle. "If you're not enjoying it, maybe you're better off.""Well, to be honest, there's no point me being here. It's benefiting no-one. Myself or the team.""Look,
see how you go," said Coyle. "The door is always open. I appreciate you
coming to me, it must be a hard thing to do. And I'm not going to pull
and drag out of you to come back. Whenever you want to come back, come
back."Sheridan remembers, "I couldn't believe I was doing it, to
be honest. But it just had to be done, simple as that. When I look back
now, it probably improved me as a player."My head was pretty
clear when I left. It was like a weight off my shoulders. As I walked
out, I met Graham (Geraghty) coming down the corridor. 'Everything
alright?' he asked. 'Yeah, yeah, grand.'"I went one way, Colm
went the other. I knew the players out on the pitch were watching and,
probably, talking about what was happening. But I was clear in the
head. I just got in the car, went home and told dad."Two things
happened in the days that followed. Team-mates rang, trying to
encourage him to return. And rumour became rampant. The story ran of a
row between player and manager. It was always going to."I knew
that," sighs Joe. "Anyone (who) drops themselves off a panel, everyone
is wondering, 'what's after happening there?' I knew people all over
the place were talking. So many stories came back to me and my family.
Ridiculous stuff about what was going on. You just had to laugh
because, no, nothing happened between us."Meath would accelerate spectacularly into late summer, before coming a cropper in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork.
Sheridan watched it all, never feeling the remotest bit of envy. Only
the day of the Cork game, did he feel faint flickers of regret.Consolation
came with Seneschalstown. Against expectation, they would win the
county title. The area was still in distress after the school bus
tragedy that killed five local girls and, somehow, football offered a
tiny and momentary prism of escape. For Joe Sheridan, the achievement
had an intimate dimension.His dad was manager, Mary was physio
(assisted by his ma), brothers Brian and Damien junior and, maybe, half
a dozen cousins were playing. His aunt was chairwoman of the club.
Actually, the day they beat Navan O'Mahonys in the county final replay
was, arguably, the most pleasing he's known in football.It could
have become a fairytale too. They took St Vincent's to a replay in the
first round of the Leinster Club Championship. Should have beaten them,
but didn't. And the following St Patrick's Day, Vincent's won the
All-Ireland.Inches.IN A sense, few things define Joe Sheridan quite like his candour.When
he was named man of the match after Meath's recent All-Ireland
quarter-final defeat of Mayo, not a single impulse in his body was
triumphal. If anything, he felt relief. For, seven years after Boylan
brought him in to train with marquee boys like Geraghty and Trevor Giles and Darren Fay, Sheridan sees his inter-county record as one of resolute under-achievement.He wasn't even on Eamonn O'Brien's
starting 15 at the beginning of this Championship and, if his four
points from play in the Mayo game spoke of burgeoning confidence, Joe
understands how frail the line is separating good days from bad.If there is a difference in him this year, it's in his fitness. He's just trained smarter. With Colm Brady
setting the schedules, Sheridan has shed almost a stone and a half in
body weight. He looks pared down to a level of athleticism that was
never previously apparent. If the weight loss suggests certain things
about his past, Sheridan doesn't hide from the suggestion."It
probably was, yeah," he agrees when it is proposed that losing the
weight was maybe an imperative. "At the beginning of the year, I was a
bit too heavy. I knew that myself. Colm and I just had a chat about it.
He said he'd work with me."It's all about just pushing yourself
harder more than anything. In years gone by, I might not have gone that
extra step. This year I just got it into my head that this was what had
to be done. It was make or break for me."The thing that Colm
emphasised was that I'd need to rest too. It's just common sense
really. In '07, I was probably training too much. I was just training
almost to say I was training and not getting any benefit from it. You'd
be doing stupid things just to be able to say, 'oh, I did an extra
bit...'"To be honest, I owe Colm a hell of a lot. He's taught me
that everything should be done for a purpose. Looking back, I was
training between sessions. I might just go to the gym or do an extra
run. And you end up wasting all your energy levels. Your body is tired
and you get fed up. I needed a rest in the end. Maybe that's the big
difference this year. I wouldn't say I've done more. It's just probably
I've done the right stuff."And I feel so much fresher."HE
was at Kerry's demolition of Dublin and remembers a Dublin fan get up
with 25 minutes gone and take his four children from the stadium.And
he couldn't help think how that was a damn strange message to be giving
to kids. What was the Dubs fan saying? That failure amounted to some
kind of betrayal? A disgrace? Listen, this Meath team could write the
book on bad days.Just over a year ago, they fell 20 points behind in an All-Ireland qualifier against Limerick. Sheridan sat on the bench through the worst of it. He reckons they were "18 or 19 down" when he got the call. Humiliated.Earlier in the season, Meath had spilled a 10-point lead against Wexford.
Who could explain how a team can bookend such trauma with two
All-Ireland semi-final appearances? But that's Meath. That's football.
That's human.Tomorrow, they give themselves a puncher's chance against Kerry. They are outsiders and that's fine.Joe
Sheridan has never been this high up the Championship mountain and
senses a giddiness ripple through the county. The view is good. Meath,
he says, are hungry and honest and ready to leave everything they
possess on the Croke Park field.And that's pretty much all that matters now. Beyond it, who can say how fate will take a hand?Who can ever say?

Yep Moss - read that yesterday. Awful thing for anyone - never mind a 14 year old to see. Fair play to the folks for giving whatever help they could. No wonder the SS recognises that football is not the be all and end all. Seems a nice guy, does Joe. Was rooting for him today but Meath FF line were cut adrift for most of the game - showed real quality in setting up the goal though!

It would appear the SS and his crew are on the march again.

Be afraid





Be very afraid

Joe is amazing. He is my favourite player CURRENTLY on the Meath team There's no show like a Joe show!

RoyalGirl wrote: There's no show like a Joe show!

No one in their right mind could argue with that.

Unless they were obsessed or something, there are a lot of weirdo's out there that's for sure

mossbags wrote:

RoyalGirl wrote: There's no show like a Joe show!

No one in their right mind could argue with that.

Unless they were obsessed or something, there are a lot of weirdo's out there that's for sure

Eh yeah ok I'll agree with that

Irony